The Vampire Leader
by Marcus S. Lazarus
Summary: What if things had been the other way around when Lucian and Sonja escaped? Centuries after the loss of her lover and her child, Sonja's quest to avenge her adopted people takes an unexpected turn...
1. Old Losses

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: I was always surprised that nobody gave this storyline a shot before now, so I thought I'd try and write it myself; one-shot for now, but that may expand if I receive enough interest

The Vampire Leader

It had been almost a thousand years since his death, and she still remembered every moment as though it had been only yesterday.

The initial plan had been so straightforward; he would escape, he would wait for her, and then she would join him as they made a new life for themselves, away from the political and racial suppression that had frustrated them for so long.

She should have expected that he would attempt to free his brethren at the same time as he tried to escape himself, but she had long since resigned herself to the fact that Lucian would not have been the man she loved if he had done anything else. Even after her father learned the truth about their liaisons, they might still have been able to escape, but she had underestimated the intensity of her father's contempt for Lucian. As they fled through the fortress's underground passages, the other Death Dealers had dropped oil barrels into the passages as an attempted delaying tactic, and one such barrel had hit Lucian when he ran under an opening slightly too quickly, the blow stunning him long enough for the vampires above to start the fire before she could get him to safety.

Even an immortal could not have survived the damage he sustained in those moments- regardless of his rapid ability to heal, the fire had simply consumed him too quickly- but Lucian's fundamental nobility had shone through regardless. His body burning in agony, Lucian had launched himself through the hole leading to the courtyard, before engaging the vampires around him as a fighter more ferocious than the berserker warriors she had heard about in tales of the Vikings. The flames had continued to consume his fur as he transformed, but he had still continued his assault on their enemies, the Death Dealers unprepared for his power and precision strikes as opposed to the feral assault they had come to expect from the surviving werewolves.

He had still died in the end, but the visibility of the threat he posed had been enough to draw attention away from her as she made her own escape. She had managed to grab a crossbow from another Death Dealer to try and help him escape- people had been so focused on his more visible threat that they barely even noticed her attempts to flee- but it had swiftly proven useless; she didn't need her long experience with death to know that he wasn't going to make it. When her father had emerged to try and capture them both, Lucian's agonised roar at her to run had made it clear that escape was all that she could do to honour him; he was far too injured to survive what had been done to him, and her remaining would accomplish nothing.

If anything, she only wished that she had left a few seconds earlier; another Death Dealer had managed to strike her in the chest with a mace before she could reach the castle walls, the same fight leaving her with a nasty scar on the left side of her face that had nearly claimed her eye. While neither wound had hindered her efforts to escape, the damage sustained had caused her to suffer a miscarriage once she had made it out of the fortress. With that casual blow, she had lost the child that she had only recently realised the existence of, along with the last part of her love that she would have ever been able to hold.

When she reached the rendezvous location, the lycans that Lucian had assembled to his cause had been devastated to learn of his death, but the blood of the child she had carried had been enough to convince even the strongest doubters of the sincerity of her feelings for him. The one called Raze in particular had made it clear that he would follow her leadership, which had been more than enough for her to establish her authority over them as she prepared to launch her counter-attack.

The werewolves might have been animals, but the lycans deserved better than to be treated as second-class citizens; besides, on a personal level, the lycans had accepted her _because_ of her child, where the vampires had automatically rejected her for the same reason.

As far as she was concerned, if her family would suppress an entire race because of what their forebears had been, she would prefer not to even consider herself a vampire any more.

That night, in the memory of her lost love, she had dedicated herself to both the destruction of the vampires who had condemned them for nothing more than loving each other, and the salvation of the lycans who had been consigned to slavery merely because of the circumstances of their birth. Raze might have been a newly-turned lycan, but his strength of will had been more than enough to compensate for that as he rallied the werewolves to join them in their attack on the fortress, particularly when all that was needed was to ensure that the werewolves targeted the enemies they would have gone after anyway. Combined with her own tactical knowledge, it hadn't taken long for them to mount an assault on the fortress a couple of nights after Lucian's demise, werewolves and lycans alike attacking the fortress close to dawn, with her fighting alongside Raze. When the sun rose as the battle continued, Raze had provided her with the skin of a slain werewolf to provide cover for any lycans who might make mistakes in the heat of battle; no vampire would willingly have donned such a disguise, and the scent it still carried was strong enough to trick any of the more feral werewolves still present into thinking that she was one of them.

The Elders and Tanis had escaped the massacre that night, but what really galled her about the memory was that, in their last face-to-face encounter, her father had _still _dared to act as though he had been the wronged party. She had done nothing more than choose a partner he did not approve of- regardless of what Lucian had done for them in the past and whose only 'sin' had been committed in her defence- and yet he had treated her as though she had rejected everything he had sought to build when all she wanted was to be allowed to live in peace with the man she loved and their child.

Even with their child and Lucian dead during their escape, Viktor had continued to act as though she was some kind of plague victim, unwilling to even consider her side in favour of his own fixation on the purity of his bloodlines; she wouldn't have been surprised if he had decided to execute her if he had managed to capture her. It had almost been a pleasure to stab him in the head during their final confrontation that day in the fortress, even if she had been uncertain that such a blow would have killed him for good even as she delivered it. She would have followed his fallen body to make sure, but her priority had to be Lucian's people rather than her own desires for revenge.

It hadn't taken long for her to hear reports that Viktor had survived, along with Tanis and the other two Elders, but she had decided to avoid pressing that issue at the time; her father might have had high expectations for her, but she wasn't arrogant enough to think that she was a match for an Elder. During a later skirmish, she had used her armour and the corpse of another female Death Dealer to fake her death to lull her father into a false sense of security, and Raze's subsequent plan to fake his own demise with the aid of opportunistic vampire Kraven had been just the additional edge they needed.

_Raze_…

He was not a substitute for Lucian in her heart, of course- she had long resolved herself to commit to Lucian's memory, and Raze held too much respect for her lost love to even consider taking their relationship further himself- but she had come to consider him a brother as well as a brother-in-arms over the centuries, and she felt that Raze saw her the same way. As far as most lycans were concerned, Raze was the true symbol of their rebellion against the vampires, and he had developed his own skills and understanding of tactics and combat over the centuries, but he still deferred to her command when they were planning a particularly powerful offensive assault. Having already witnessed him in action when he was human, she had been impressed at Raze's skills even before he was turned into a lycan, and the evident respect he had for Lucian's memory had further ensured her high opinion of him. For his part, while Raze had initially accepted her only in Lucian's memory, she had proven herself in his eyes over the years, and he had more than once stated that he considered her a true lycan in every way that mattered.

It was a point of frustration to her that she was unable to serve as a 'true' lycan by contributing to the cause as more than a single warrior, but even Raze's high opinion of her couldn't change the fact that anyone she bit would become a vampire rather than a lycan. While she had come to accept her fate, she refused to turn anyone she might encounter, relying on Raze to rally new recruits to their cause in her name; she could cope with being an outcast from the rest of her species, but she wasn't about to force anyone else into her position who didn't have to be there.

She had remained hidden for centuries, working to find some means of turning the tables on her father as her adopted people were hunted to the point of extinction, forced into an alliance with a vampire she would have ignored as dangerous to the Coven back when she still thought them worth defending…

But it would all be worth it in the end.

Now, almost eight hundred years since the death of her lover and child, Sonja was almost ready to punish her father for what he had done to her so many centuries ago.


	2. Current Plans

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: Still not quite at the main action yet, but we get to the main events of the first film in the next chapter; hope you enjoy this new look into what make Sonja tick…

The Vampire Leader

Sitting in the underground laboratory that was her current base, Sonja couldn't help but reflect how things had fallen so far.

She wasn't self-centred enough to regret her decision to join the lycans merely because of the creature comforts she'd sacrificed- her position in court had never been that important to her beyond the relative freedom it gave her to pursue her own interests outside of her role as a Death Dealer- but there were times when it could be more uncomfortable than others. They'd done their best with their current accommodations as more and more lycans gathered together in preparation for their upcoming assault, but their enhanced senses did little to make this place pleasant accommodation.

It was also far from a sufficiently sterile lab, but it was the best that they could do to provide Singe with the appropriate resources for his work. He had been an unconventional choice to be turned into a lycan, but he had proven his worth since Sonja and Raze had brought him into the fold, he was even one of the few lycans to be aware of her true species and role in the war who had not been present during her original assault on her father's fortress. A scientist dying of cancer, he had been turned some years ago to offer his expertise in accomplishing her personal goal of artificially creating the hybrid that her father had sought to prevent, and had continued to keep up with modern developments despite the obvious limitations of his need for secrecy.

She might have had an easier time achieving that goal if she had simply tried to have another child, but even if she was at war, there were lines that she would not cross, and that was one of them. Putting aside her enduring loyalty to Lucian, she would not create a child simply to force it into a position where it would have to kill its grandfather; after her father's attempts to use her to further his own agenda, she refused to repeat his actions with her own child.

Singe had regular access to her blood in his attempts to create a means of blending the two races, but he and Raze both knew never to suggest that she attempt to create a child the old-fashioned way, even if they found a naturally-born lycan who would be willing to have sex with a vampire. She had dedicated herself to ensuring her father's demise, but she would not create a child to provide the means to do so; she was better than that (Even if there hadn't been the obvious potential handicap that a natural hybrid may only be possible when both parents were born into their current state; very few females had ever been bitten by the lycans, and the need for them to stay underground made it hard to find a safe location for a pregnant lycan).

Still, even with the potential hurdle of their hybrid-related difficulties, the current plan was going well. They'd tracked most of Corvinus's likely mortal descendants, and even if some of them had proven fruitless, the remaining candidates were all located in or around Budapest, and they even had the interesting bonus that it would be the full moon on the night of their attack against the coven. Most lycans had 'evolved' beyond the limitation of only transforming on the night of the full moon itself, but its light would still give them a useful advantage in terms of raw strength, regardless of the Death Dealers serving as the mansion's defence.

Studying the photographs of the coven's current Death Dealers, Sonja smiled wistfully as she came across the image that she considered the most important photograph; the image of Selene, her father's unofficial adopted daughter.

She was never entirely certain how she should feel about her father's warped desire to 'reclaim' her by turning someone who looked so like her- she varied between being touched that she had such an impact on him and outraged that he still dared to act as though she had been the one in the wrong for her relationship with Lucian- but in a strange way, she nevertheless felt a certain kinship with the woman who could be seen as her sister. While Selene's actions against the lycans were fundamentally misguided- with the werewolves gone, lycans tended to avoid attacking innocent humans these days apart from some accidents in early transformations, even if the rumours she'd heard about Selene's turning could be accurate for the time- Sonja could still admire her 'little sister's' skills in combat from an objective perspective.

Their resemblance had also inspired her to take more action regarding changing her appearance. The scar on the side of her face was significant enough to make a distinction between the two, but since seeing photos of her 'sister', Sonja had taken to keeping her hair in a style between her old hair length and Selene's shorter style, keeping most of it tied back in a ponytail with a couple of lengths on either side of her face to increase the distinction between herself and Selene; most of the vampires who knew her personally had died in the first assault on her father's fortress, but it never hurt to take precautions.

She sometimes wished that she could convince other vampires that the lycans were not really monsters, but she knew that centuries of tradition and belief would be hard to shake; she had known the lycans from the moment of their creation, thanks to her childhood with Lucian, but too many only knew the old tales of the first werewolves and tarred all lycans with the same brush. In the heat of battle, and after centuries of conflict, it was easier to eliminate the active threat immediately than try and make people see that their prejudices were mistaken.

That was one of the few reasons she tolerated her current alliance with Kraven; he might be an egotistical moron with ideas and ambition above his ability, but at least he had enough influence to set things up the way they wanted them. If all went according to plan, they could eliminate Amelia as she arrived with her servants, and then attack the mansion while Viktor and Marcus still slept. With Kraven's men deliberately placed in poor defensive positions, Sonja and her chosen team could eliminate the Elders and then allow Kraven to stage a counter-offensive, resulting in an iron-clad treaty with the lycans when faced with a position where the alternative was mutually assured destruction.

Of course, Kraven would be unaware of the existence of the hybrids until it was too late, just in case he tried anything funny to turn the tables on them later, but that wasn't something that Sonja thought about much; her main priority right now was ensuring that the hybrids were ready in time for the big push, in order to ensure that nobody tried to subvert her goals.

She might have avoided having children to get to this point, but she acknowledged that she had still crossed more than a few lines to achieve her goal. One of the main things she had insisted on as she took command of the lycans was that they never attack the innocent, but she had naturally been forced to put that rule aside when tracking candidates for the possible heirs to the Corvinus bloodline, as well as preparing for the upcoming big push; the possibility of finding the key to victory was too important for morality to enter into it, and numbers would be needed if that plan failed.

Once her father and the Elders were eliminated, she could focus on ensuring that her lycan forces were more careful about recruitment; right now, numbers were going to be vital for this plan to work, even with her efforts to create a secret weapon.

And on that topic, with Trix and Forbes having failed to claim Michael Corvin, it looked like it was going to be up to her and Raze to take steps to collect the next 'candidate'; at least this time she knew where to go, and Kraven's own ego and desire to cover his tracks should result in him neatly discouraging further pursuit without them even having to ask him to do so…


	3. The First Sighting

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: Still short, but I assure you the chapters will get longer as the changes start to occur…

The Vampire Leader

If she hadn't been so close to the deadline, Sonja would never have risked coming out after a possible candidate this soon after a failed attempt to capture them. She knew that she could have stayed in the lair and continued her preparations, but Raze had suggested it could be useful to have her available as an 'ace-in-the-hole' just in case something went wrong, particularly when the surviving Death Dealer from the earlier assault may know who they were after. Having borrowed one of Raze's coats- it might be large on her, but when wrapped around her and closed it effectively concealed her vampiric scent from any of the other lycans present on this assault, just in case she stood downwind at an inconvenient moment.

She had noticed a distinctive Jaguar sitting outside Michael Corvin's apartment building when she arrived, but she wasn't going to worry about that just yet; the numbers she'd sent into the building should be enough to handle anything. Three lycans had been sent to the upper levels to try and capture Michael directly while also eliminating any vampires who might be tracking him, while Raze was waiting downstairs to try and intercept Michael if he tried to escape.

She just hoped that the lycans didn't go too far; they wanted Michael alive, and lycans getting hungry wouldn't help them complete their work. That was one area where vampire prejudice against lycans was depressingly accurate; unless you were particularly strong-willed, or had the right genetics, when someone was first turned into a lycan they tended to resort to very violent methods to make their points, and by the time they were at the point when they had control of their wolf they were used to handling things that way. Raze was there to remind them that they didn't have the luxury of going all-out against their target on this occasion, leaving her to make sure that Michael didn't get away by accident.

The sound of loud roars- only just audible from outside thanks to her enhanced hearing- suggested that things were proving more problematic than she'd expected, but she had faith that it wasn't anything to worry about just yet; if they just focused on getting a sample of Michael's blood, everything else should be fine…

Then she saw Michael Corvin run out of the building, followed closely by a dark-haired vampire dressed in black leather who both dived into the car, Sonja's eyes widening as she recognised the vampire in question.

_Selene_…

Of all the circumstances that she had pictured that would have resulted in her being in such close proximity to her 'sister', seeing her act to save their latest target was not one that had immediately come to mind. Selene had always avoided hurting humans according to the reports she'd received of Death Dealer activity, so she couldn't be here simply to hunt for food, but there'd been so little evidence to suggest that her lycans were actually following Michael in particular…

As the Jaguar began to drive away, Sonja took care to stay out of sight- briefly noting and disregarding some distinctive scents from the car; she'd never have noticed the first if she hadn't spent so long with its source, and the second didn't smell like it would be particularly serious- before she pulled out her phone and called Raze; if Michael was already on the move, she didn't need to worry about accidentally alerting him to their presence.

"_He's outside_-" Raze said, his voice low and hard to hear over the phone.

"Did you get the sample?" Sonja asked, focusing the conversation on what mattered most right now.

"_Yes_…" Raze said.

"Then deposit it somewhere secure and let them go," Sonja said. "If Michael's acquired a guardian, we don't want to show just how interested we are in him until we have to, and we still have a couple of days until we need the hybrid formula to be completed."

"_But Corvin_-" Raze began.

"Has been bitten by you, in which case he will come to us sooner or later," Sonja interjected, still smiling thoughtfully as she stared after the car. "Besides… if what I've seen is any indication, I do believe my 'little sister' is already showing that she's more like me than our father would like."

"You think so?" Raze said, Sonja's attention shifting from the phone to her lieutenant as he walked out of Corvin's building, his jacket torn open to reveal an old scar where Viktor had attempted to stab him during their first assault and only narrowly missed his heart, his eyes wideningin surprise as he looked at the place where the car had been. "She doesn't even know-"

"She came all the way out here on the possibility that he might be in danger; trained warriors don't go to those lengths on a casual hunch," Sonja explained. "From what I've read of my 'sister', she doesn't go to those kind of lengths on a whim; it may be _slightly _more difficult for her to complete her duty than my father would expect."

"You're sure?" Raze asked.

"I didn't turn out like he expected, did I?" Sonja pointed out, smiling over at Raze before she looked more critically at him. "That said, I assume you have the sample?"

"Here," Raze said, reaching into his coat and taking out a small glass phial, clearly filled with blood, that he handed over to her.

"Good," Sonja said, nodding in satisfaction as she studied the phial; it wasn't enough to perfect the serum, but it would allow them to run the test that would confirm whether it was worth pursuing Michael any further.

For the moment, Selene was clearly interested in keeping Michael safe, there was no reason for any of the vampires to suspect that he might be the key to their work, and if Raze's bite had been obvious Selene would have probably shot Michael already.

So long as Selene didn't look _too _closely at Michael before she'd had the chance to bond, this could still work out…


	4. Taking a Gambit

Disclaimer: I don't own 'Underworld'; you know the drill

Feedback: Always appreciated

AN: A shift in perspective this time as we start to look at recent events from Selene's point of view, set shortly after Michael's escape from the manor and looking at what happened to her after her escape from Raze

The Vampire Leader

Sitting in the mansion, Selene stared in frustration at the wall as she turned over what she had discovered so far.

Not only had she discovered hints of a lycan presence in this city that was potentially greater than anything they'd faced since Raze's time, but the lycans' evident interest in Michael in particular raised several questions that she had no way of answering; why would lycans show such specific interest in a single human?

Unfortunately, her efforts to question Michael hadn't amounted to much; he'd spent most of the previous day unconscious while she was stuck under that pier after passing out in the car due to her injury fighting that lycan, and even after she'd made it back to the manor, Michael had escaped while she was distracted having to deal with Kraven's egocentric queries about the nature of her interest in Michael.

Combined with Kraven's unusual comment about Raze during their earlier confrontation, Selene had been left with only one option; enter the mansion's forbidden archives and see what she could find about Kraven's role in the death of Raze. The first few books that she had investigated hadn't turned up anything more interesting than pictures of early Death Dealers carrying out increasingly brutal assaults on lycan prisoners- even animals didn't deserve the kind of treatment depicted- but Selene was puzzled by the tone of the texts at times; it was as though Tanis had written these books while taking care _not _to mention something, practically skimming over the details of Raze's early assaults apart from a brief reference to Lucian, an early lycan leader whose death had prompted Raze's own campaign. She eventually dismissed that question when she had finally found a more promising-looking passage talking about the events she'd only really heard about before now.

_Of the scores of Brave Souls who entered Raze's fortress, a single Vampire survived: Kraven, who was richly rewarded for not only setting the great blaze, but for returning with evidence of the Lycan Master's demise: the branded skin, cut from Raze's very arm._

It was an interesting story, but when Selene got down to it, the skin wasn't exactly hard evidence; skin could be taken from a living being just as easily as it could be cut off a corpse, particularly given the reports she'd heard of Raze's strength (She'd once heard one of her teachers mention a rumour that Raze had killed a lycan _before _he was even turned, although her other instructors had quickly dismissed that story as nothing).

She had so many theories, but so little evidence; nothing she'd found so far could be more than her own paranoia and dislike of Kraven affecting her judgement…

Thoughts on the possible other interpretations of Kraven's story were cut short as Selene turned the page and found herself staring at a very distinctive picture. The chest and arms depicted might be lacking a face due to a clearly deliberately torn page, but the powerful physique was virtually unmistakeable; how many lycans could be _that _well-built, particularly with that distinctive scar on their chest, as though someone had stabbed them and only just missed the heart…?

It might be a series of coincidences as opposed to genuine evidence, but it was enough for Selene right now; too many pieces were falling into place for them to _all_ be a coincidence.

As she walked out of the library after putting the books back in their place, she fought down the urge to jump when she heard footsteps approaching her location, but relaxed when the only person to come around the corner was the servant-girl, Erika; a witness to her activities might be an issue, but she hadn't done anything serious enough for Erika to bother reporting it even if anyone would believe her over Selene.

"I've been looking for you everywhere-" Erika began.

"Not now," Selene interjected, walking impatiently past the younger vampire.

"He's been bitten," Erika said, prompting Selene to turn and look firmly at her. "Your human; he's been marked by a lycan."

"Did Kraven put you up to this?" Selene asked, already doubting the story; this was very likely to be some kind of twisted joke…

"No!" Erika protested, a desperation about her manner that couldn't be faked. "I saw the wound with my own eyes; I swear it!"

Unfortunately, Selene was left with little choice but to believe Erika's words, which reminded her of that brief encounter between Michael and that lycan at the doors of the elevator before she'd manage to drag Michael to safety.

In the chaos of their escape, the lycan- _Raze_?- could have bitten Michael without Selene noticing it, and she hadn't exactly checked him over in depth; there hadn't been any obvious signs of injury, and she'd attributed the scent of blood to blood from the injuries she'd give his attacker…

Which meant that, if Erika was telling the truth, Michael was a _lycan_…

_No_.

He wasn't part of this war yet; he was a lycan through circumstance, and nothing more.

He couldn't be just another mindless, rampaging beast; Selene didn't know what she was feeling yet, but she knew that she wasn't about to give up on Michael when there was still a chance.

She _had _to save him…

"But what about the Covenant?" Erika called after her, as Selene turned to walk away. "You know it's forbidden!"

Selene knew the Covenant better than Erika ever could, but she also knew that she didn't care; with an innocent involved in this war who deserved better than to become just another beast, her objective had now become saving Michael's life and exposing Kraven's apparent alliance with Raze.

Unfortunately, if her suspicions about Kraven were correct, her options were limited. Khan's loyalty to Viktor was normally an advantage to her, but it also meant that he wouldn't disobey Viktor's rules about putting Kraven in charge unless he had a clear reason to act otherwise, and so far Kraven hadn't actually done anything that would confirm that he was working against the coven. She didn't know Amelia well enough to feel comfortable waiting for the Elder to get here tomorrow so that she could take control of the situation, and the same issue applied to Marcus- something about the way he looked at her when they met always left her feeling like he was waiting for an excuse to attack her- which meant that, if she was going to do anything, she was going to have to take a greater risk.

In order to ensure the survival of her race, she was going to have to defy more than one of the rules she had fought to defend for so many centuries…

* * *

It was almost disappointing how easy it was for her to gain access to the Elders' crypt on her own; she had to reassure herself with the knowledge that she'd only made it that far because she was a trusted member of the Coven, rather than because the coven as a whole was naïve. Awakening an Elder in this manner was dangerous, but she had to hope that what she'd done to reinforce the relevant memory in her mind would be enough for Viktor to hear her plea.

Raising the coffin itself hadn't been too difficult, but actually seeing Viktor in such a withered condition had been a shock all by itself; she had known that Elders were often weak when they slept, but she had never been this close to one prior to an Awakening. Trying to ignore Viktor's shrivelled and desiccated form, Selene bit her wrist to start the blood flowing and then held her wound over the metal dish that would lead to the feeding tube now positioned over Viktor's mouth. For a moment, Selene concentrated on the memory of her message, before stepping back and doing her sleeve up once again before moving the coffin to the recovery area at the back of the chamber. After taking a moment to secure the chamber that had contained Viktor's coffin so that everything would appear undisturbed, Selene set up the assorted tubes and bags of blood that needed to be linked to Viktor, finally standing back with a slight smile as she watched her work.

This might be a risk, but if she could just convince Viktor of the treachery she'd uncovered and buy time to track down where Raze was hiding, she might just have a chance to save the coven and Michael…

The sound of activity outside the chamber ended her work, prompting her to make sure that everything was properly connected to Viktor before she left the room; with everyone focused on the monitors, she should be able to get out of here without anyone immediately reacting. Walking out to examine the screen, she stared in shock at the sight of Michael standing outside the gate, drenched and wearing only a thin T-shirt against the rain, desperately calling her name.

She didn't know what Michael was doing back here, but she had to get him to safety before anyone else found out what he was becoming; if she could keep him contained, she might have a chance…

"Is that Michael?" Kraven asked, glaring at her.

Ignoring the regent's query, Selene leaned over to activate the speaker system as Michael began screaming about what was happening to him; she had to prioritise right now, and pandering to Kraven's ego wasn't one of her issues.

"I'll be right out," she said firmly.

"If you go to him, you'll never be welcome in this house again!" Kraven said, glaring at her in exasperation.

With that statement, Selene decided that she didn't care about even pretending to recognise Kraven's authority any more; no matter what he was up to, she doubted that Kraven would have the nerve to kill an Elder even if Viktor wasn't at his peak yet.

"Now that Viktor's awake," she said, turning to return the regent's glare with one of her own, "we'll see what he has to say about that."

With that statement stunning Kraven and the other vampires into silence, she strode out of the chamber and up towards the garage, getting into a suitable car- her favoured Jaguar was lost, but this should be an acceptable substitute- and heading out of the house, drawing to a halt at the gate to open the door.

"Get in," she said to Michael, indicating the passenger seat.

She had no idea what she would have to deal with when she got back to the mansion after everything that she had done, but she knew that she couldn't stay here and risk Michael being executed for something that he had no control over; until Viktor had the chance to wake up and process her evidence, her first priority was to keep him safe… and that was _just _because she didn't want any innocents to die; it was _not _because of anything else…

* * *

As she watched the car drive away, safely hidden from view- the guard-dogs would never pay attention to her scent; without her usual disguises, she still smelled enough like a vampire to deflect attention- Sonja smiled at the sight.

Considering how he'd managed to escape from the mansion in the first place, it was almost certain that Selene at least suspected what had happened to Michael, even if she had no specific evidence as of yet, and yet she was still acting to try and save him…

Sonja just wished that she had more time to appreciate the irony; centuries since Viktor had lost her, and he continued to make the same 'mistakes' in raising his children through his own prejudices.

Michael was out of the mansion and on the move; all she had to do now was follow Selene without being seen, send Singe out to coordinate the recovery mission while Raze prepared, and they'd have him in custody soon enough.

Once they had his blood, it wouldn't take long to transform Raze into the ultimate weapon against her father…


End file.
